


Toothmarks by scarredsodeep

by scarredsodeep



Category: AFI
Genre: Angst, Burials Era, Inspired by Real Events, Jadam - Freeform, Javey - Freeform, M/M, Vignette, i hope you suffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3097538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is love pain, is pain love? A vignette response to I Hope You Suffer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toothmarks by scarredsodeep

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a lovely review by Strych, and many dedicated years of obsessively collecting AFI photos on my hard drive, and how the I Hope You Suffer video is basically porn. It has been a long time since I have written real-life bandfic, so I hope you enjoy it!

The first time, Adam said, “Don’t do this, if it’s just to get back at Dave." Jade did it anyway. He knew even then that it was more than sex to Adam, but he tried not to. The war he and Davey waged was a suffocatingly polite one. Their battlefield was the stretched space between them at concerts, where before their bodies had been pressed so close that Jade never knew whose sweat was stinging his eyes and salting his tongue, Davey’s or his own. Where before at the end of the show Jade would be smeared with glitter and eyeliner from Dave’s face. Where before the second they were backstage they would tumble together, kiss, bite lips, mumble and laugh, both working frantically, futilely, to peel Davey out of his sweat-drenched vinyl pants. Now they used throwaway phrases and casual reminiscences as weapons, and sent deliberate messages, buried in posture and gaze, back and forth furiously through photoshoots.

Adam first became a prop in front of a camera. Jade stood near him, saw Dave’s cheeks color with jealousy, and photo by photo drew near enough to grab Adam’s arm. Adam yielded to his touch sorrowfully; he saw the photos too. The whole world did. Adam read in them what he was to Jade, saw that between his friends he had been scraped into a jagged edge for them to hurt each other with. But when Jade beckoned he went anyway. When Jade reached out, Adam melted into his touch. Knowing where he stood was unable to change what Adam wanted, had always wanted.

Whether the band would survive the break-up was never in doubt. Dave was too stubborn to let any other thing happen; and if Davey wasn’t going to let on that it was hard for him, seeing Jade’s face day after day, writing songs together in this guarded, closed-off way, then Jade was too proud to show it too. Whether Adam would survive it was much less certain.

Dave began to remake himself from the ground up. He cut his hair off, that favorite feature of Jade’s, and started dressing in differently. He experimented with facial hair. He played up his masculinity. He began to look terribly _fierce_. Every day he looked less and less like Jade’s Davey. His face, once so beneficent, took on a hard edge; cruelty seeped into his bearing, the set of his jaw, the angle of his head. Jade thought he looked like he would be cruel to you, but you would like it. You would throw yourself at his feet and beg for more. There was nothing about him anymore that was soft.

To even the score, Jade drew Adam into his bunk on the tour bus, into semi-secluded corners of the studio, anywhere Dave might hear, and made him moan. Handsome dependable Adam, always in jeans and a t-shirt no matter what kind of outfit Davey or their manager procured for them, assenting to eyeliner only once in their long history of publicity photos and never again. Jade noticed, and tried not to, that Adam had started to drink more openly, less apologetically. Jade knew he was looking for an excuse, for a way not to feel it. The things they did together, the way their bodies fitted and warmed so perfectly. The way they could lose themselves inside it and it felt better, more right, than anyone ever had. The way Jade continued to fuck him without ever loving him, the way Adam continued to fail to refuse. The way Adam’s heart ached, bloody with longing, and the way he succumbed every time, Jade’s breath like ether, pulling him under. _Don’t do this if it’s just to hurt Dave_ , Adam kept saying, if only to himself. As if Dave was the only one this hurt.

Each determined to prove to the other how little they were affected by the break-up, how strong their friendship remained, Jade and Davey played chicken and ended up forming a new band. It was a terrible decision. They began doggedly to write a Blaqk Audio album. It was full of their anger at each other, contorted into shapes besides its own as if that concealed its meaning. Aggressively forged, the album came out strong. Each was surprised by this. Eventually they wrote another.

In town to work on one of his side projects, Adam spent a month sleeping in the guest room in Jade and Marissa’s apartment. Jade saw him at breakfast, saw him at dinner. Studied with fondness the familiar planes of his face. One night Adam came home late, smelling of cigarette smoke with hickeys and lipstick on his neck. The sight of it made Jade’s gut curdle and go sour. After that, Jade started seeing Adam in the shower. Whisper-silent in the middle of the night in Adam’s borrowed bed. On the kitchen counter, loud and messy, enjoying the freedom of making as much noise as they pleased. Once, memorably, on the patio, in those fresh cool moments while the sun went down. Until even with no one around to hear, Jade reached for Adam every day, and always found him there. There, willing, a soft look in his eyes that Jade began to return. Adam saw it one day, like looking in a mirror. He packed his things and left the same night, making his excuses. He sent Marissa flowers and a bottle of wine, to thank her for letting him stay in her home. He sent several bottles of wine to himself, trying to drink away the capacity to tell right from wrong, believing mistakenly that this might make the hurt go away.

Chasing the same thing, Jade got married. He believed this would save him. It did not. At the reception Davey scribbled song lyrics on his napkin, scowling tremendously, and only danced if Jade was near enough to see the way his body twisted and moved. He was furious that after all this time he should be so jealous. Adam, unnoticed, drank deeply and bitterly, watched a baseball game on his phone, daring someone to see him, to stop him. No one did.

The band started work on a new full-length release. The lyrics Dave brought Jade were jarring—they were break-up songs. Two albums had passed without Davey putting forth a proper break-up song, and at first Jade felt tongue-tied and clumsy, fingers tripping over themselves on the strings or on his keyboard as he fell all over himself pretending not to realize who the words were about. _I hope you suffer_ , Davey wrote on a piece of looseleaf paper and handed to him, glancing up through his bangs to see what effect this had. _Just like I suffered_. The words stung at Jade, worrying fresh wounds, Adam-shaped wounds, wounds he had pasted a wedding band over as if this was a bandage: _intoxicate with the new; pretend I’m no longer here_. At first Jade didn’t know how to write music that went with Dave’s hurled paper accusations, but as he heard the words over and over again, turned them around in his head, tasted them, he ruminated on the ugliness that had passed between him and Davey, the pulsing shards of what had been their love and friendship, the ill uses they had put one another to since. And he began to feel the song inside him, as he did with all the best ones, pushing to the surface. He looked at Davey and he thought, _I’ve seen my darkest days; you gave each one to me_. His own sincere desire to see Dave suffer rose up in him, pushed out in notes. Feeling his heart hammer against his ribs, Jade played the song and Davey sang it. Trembling, breathing hard, they stared into each other’s eyes over the words.

Over the cathartic course of the most violently intense writing sessions they had ever shared, he and Davey hammered out the ballad of their hatred, of their pain, of their loss and suffering and all the ways they’d hurt each other, and in the end there was an album, a very honest one, full of blame and anger, hurling all the insults and punishments that they had never dared to, for the sake of the band. They did it together; this was both strange and the only way it could have been. Neither of them imagined what Hunter or Adam might have felt, playing these songs, adding their own voices to the words. And both pushed to release I Hope You Suffer as a single over any other song. Putting it out into the world, it was a way of letting go. And both Davey and Jade finally felt ready to let go.

Davey had rebuilt himself sexy and unsmiling and free, trailing handsome young men to dinners and parties and concerts, had every appearance of enjoying his life. Things between him and Jade were better than they had been in years; still cordial and rather distant, but legitimately pleasant, not strained. But then, Jade supposed, it was easy to forgive someone looking as bad as Jade was. Visibly even to Jade, he had become a pale shadow of himself, foolishly clinging to the hope that his marriage could somehow save him, torn open by guilt over how he and Adam hadn’t stopped fucking, for all that he whispered “this is the last time” into Adam’s sweaty shoulder each time, lips forming the words again and again. He was almost forty years old and he had no control over himself, did not have the power to execute his own ardent desires. The imprints of his teeth on Adam’s skin lasted longer than his resolve.

How had it started? In suffering, in revenge. Adam had asked him, begging with his eyes, not to do it, not to give him what he’d wanted for years in this awful way, because Adam had known that he would let Jade do anything to him. He would let Jade punish and abuse him, would let Jade wrench open his ribcage and tear out his heart. He would give himself to Jade like an offering, would climb up onto the altar and wait to be destroyed. He would desperately, willingly, let Jade use him until he was used up. “Don’t do this, if it’s just to get back to Dave.” This one thing he had ever asked, and Jade had covered up his lips with a hot, needy mouth, devouring Adam’s sole request. _I face destruction in you; and you just kill me and walk away_. By the time Jade grew to return Adam’s sentiment, there was nothing left of it.

Adam could not help but listen to the words of their new songs. Could not help but feel them. There is nothing quite like being used, coldly and bitterly used, by the man you have asked to protect you, to make you fall out of love. Every place Jade touched him turned to ice. Their bodies collided and Adam was stone. Nightly Jade would call him, would come find him, would beg with eyes and briefly alighting fingertips, would look upon Adam with tenderness enough to make him feel sick. There was such a thing as too late. Jade grew paler, rarely smiled, went home to his wife, wept silently. When Adam fucked him now, he covered Jade’s mouth, not wanting to hear. Not wanting anyone to hear. The irony of this was not lost on him. When Jade’s hot tears ran over his hand, Adam just kept going, pretending not to feel them.

The last time, Jade said, “Wait.” The part of Adam that was still obedient to anyone stilled, hands fidgeting impatient on Jade’s belt. “I’m so sorry,” Jade said, and Adam could hear the pain in his voice, and it made him feel nothing. “I don’t want it to be like this,” Jade said. “I _love_ you.” How long had Adam dreamed of hearing those words? He’d always imagined they would have an effect, was only vaguely surprised that they bounced off of him like nothing. “Please,” Jade said, and finding this whining obnoxious, Adam smothered the plea with a hard, urgent press of his lips. Desperate, Jade yielded. Roughly, they tried to break open on one another’s edges. It was over quickly, their bodies shaky and sweaty and spent.

The last time, Jade tried to smile, but the edges of it came unstuck. “I love you,” he said again, but this time it sounded like he was begging, like it was question. Like there was any way but one Adam could possibly answer.

The last time, Adam looked the pale, sad reflection of the man he’d loved dead in the eyes and said, “I hope you suffer.”

 

 

End Notes:

I hope you enjoyed this at least a tenth as much as I'm enjoying the way Davey's tendons move in his neck when he sings. *collapses*

 

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8932>


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